Makana municipality had given protest organisers permission to hold a Church Square sit-in on Saturday according to police Lieutenant Colonel Funisile Phillip.
Makana municipality had given protest organisers permission to hold a Church Square sit-in on Saturday according to police Lieutenant Colonel Funisile Phillip.
He said the police had every reason to believe that the march and sit-in would be peaceful and there would therefore be no purpose in deploying reinforcements for the action. The international movement coordinating protests in cities all over the world said on its website that, “Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non-violent protest”.
It went on to say that “On October 15th, we will meet on the streets to initiate the global change we want. We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen”. The key word here is “peacefully” and by no stretch of the imagination can throwing buckets of excrement into City Hall be described as peaceful.
Pastor Buyisile Geelbooi of the Gospel Ambassadors Ministries described the act as an attack on his church group. It is easy to understand why the pastor was so incensed at the uncalled-for disruption of his meeting. If the protesters had gripes against the local authorities, there was no need to take vengeance on a group of church-goers who had absolutely nothing to do with these gripes.
Geelbooi, a resident in the township, said he understood from firsthand experience what the bucket system was all about. It was therefore strange to see students, who appeared to come from comfortable middle-class backgrounds, lecturing him on the indignity of having to use a bucket as a toilet.
The purpose of the worldwide protests was to effect global change because the current crop of world leaders, both political and business, are greedy individuals who exploit our planet for their own self-enrichment. The Grahamstown protests overlapped with this goal to a large extent, but there was also a substantial anti-ANC element to the demonstrations.
We have no problems with either of these goals as, according to our Constitution, South Africans have a democratic right to freely express their feelings and voice their grievances. We do however, have strong objections if any such protest actions impinge on the rights of others to hold a peaceful meeting.
Throwing human waste into the city hall is a good way of catching everyone’s attention, but this time we believe the UPM and the SSJ have gone too far.\
